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The government is about to start spying on your Facebook and Twitter feeds a lot more

The government already monitors Vox Political but this could signify a serious incursion into our right to free speech. How long until people start being prosecuted, rather than simply monitored, over things they’ve tweeted?

Ministers yesterday slipped out an announcement that agreement has been reached for the first cross-Whitehall contract to monitor what people tweet, post and blog about the Government.

Under the terms of the deal five companies have been approved to keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter and blogs and provide daily reports to Whitehall on what’s being said in “real time”.

Ministers, their advisers and officials will provide the firms with “keywords and topics” to monitor. A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said the contract was about getting better value for money.

“Departments have always monitored social media but this agreement means they can find the most appropriate way of doing this at the best price,” she said.

32 thoughts on “The government is about to start spying on your Facebook and Twitter feeds a lot more”

I don’t know that this is so bad. Politicians are often accused of being out of touch, so this could be a good way of addressing that. It’s an opportunity which wasn’t there until recently. If they don’t do this then if they want to know what’s being said in the streets they’re stuck with the results from focus groups, not widely celebrated for their accuracy. I’m ok with it.

Who do you think employs most of the Trolls on the Internet (for the UK) CHQ do on the government and big business behave, the way was paved when Thatcher de-unionised the communication center and then sold it to the private sector to run. You say any thing that they don’t like and you will get trolled where ever they can.

Wow Mike you alone will keep them busy,
So lets the contest begin everyone, start blogging, Face booking and Tweeting. Make documentary’s put them on Youtube. Take part in your national and local radio phone in programmes. Tell the government what we really think of them and their snout-n-trough lackeys and sycophantic press. They cant lock everyone up for heresy.

There iis still freedom of speech. The government iis just monitoring the media, not stopping iit. It needs to do this to counter the rise of violent action by some groups and individuals. If you have nothing to hide then be pleased that social media is being checked. I am.

To some degree you are all correct, the Govmnt is monitoring for keywords so that things like the London bombing and other militant attacks can be prevented. But they are also trying to gag media content on subject matter that they do not like. The protest in front of the BBC shows this, as the demonstration wasn’t reported in the news.
It is our right to complain, so if they finally get the message that things with the ‘peasantry’ is wrong, they can take note to maybe changing their patterns in the aerie halls of Politics. And after all, we the People have to re-elect them when all is said and done. ( Ballot box rigging aside he he )

It is not possible to monitor all social media traffic in a close surveillance sense. The bulk of it is done via automatic tracking and connection to suspects in a net or tree formation. These new targets are then looked at in more detail. It is similar to bulk phone records. There is not enough manpower to look at it all in detail. The data is kept historically so when suspects pop up their records can be looked at. Because no one knows who in the future the suspects will be, it is necessary to keep all the data.

Don’t be fooled by announcements here and in the US that the collection of bulk phone and email records is stopping. It is not, as it is necessary to stop terrorism. There are several other agencies apart from NSA and GCHQ who collect the data offshore with no oversight. The other way around US and UK legislation is that we collect the US data and the US collects ours. It has been that way for several years. That way we both operate within the law.

Keywords are not sufficient to flag up risks. It is more analysis of content. There are around 40,000 emails a second sent to be analysed. Keywords would generate millions of targets. It has to be AI analysis. It is not just the obvious platforms that are analysed. The chatter that goes on while gaming on Xbox etc is monitored as are all conversations on electronic devices such as text, Skype. The most important concept is ‘big data’. This is where data is associated from many sources to give a bigger and more accurate picture of people. A commercial example would be combining bank data, mortgage data, magazine subscriptions, buying patterns via Nectar, Tesco, Waitrose loyalty cards, use of credit/debit cards etc plus regression analysis to determine buying factors. If you use these types of techniques then you can predict buying propensity with a high degree of accuracy for a product that you want to sell.

The same is done with intelligence chatter to build a big picture of suspect individuals, especially when combined with geo positioning data from your cell phone to track movements. Add car number plate registrations, ferry and plane usage and you are just beginning to scratch the surface of what goes on.

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